Track's Effects Bin or Bus?

If I want to apply several effects to specific track, am I better off using the effects bin in that track pane or do people generally send to buses? If I use the effects bin, will it apply the effects in the order top to bottom? I.e. If I first put a reverb in, then insert an EQ, it will first create reverb and then EQ the verb'd sound?

One of the important differences in where you place your effects, IMO, is if you place them on a bus, you may not freeze the bus. If you place them on the track, you retain the option to freeze. So if I want to apply an effect to just one track, I use the track fx bin. Examples of where I use the bus fx bin: dual mono OH tracks, dual mono guitar tracks for pad guitars, variations of LA compression, reverbs, delays, drum submixes, etc.

Another distinction is in a buss if you have a verb followed by an EQ, you will only be EQing the verb--not the source; in the track bin with verb followed by EQ, you're EQing the source with the verb, so it partly depends on what you're looking for.

ORIGINAL: fessorman
Another thing for using busses are as track sends... that is you maintain the original signal and send a copy to a bus - in that way you can apply effects that don't have a "MIX" setting and still be able to retain the original signal.

That's what I do, I like the idea of sending as much clean signal through as possible. I discovered the power of buses rather late and I tend to over use them. Problem with using a bus that way is getting the overall level of the instrument right can be hard so I create a second bus as a master of that instrument eg,

• track 1 guitar1, send to GTR1 FX bus, output to GTR1 MSTR bus.
  
• (tracks 2, 3 etc as various takes are recorded/edited)
  
• GTR1 FX bus, has effects, output to GTR1 MSTR bus.
  
• GTR1 MSTR bus used to set the over level of the guitar.
  

Once you've got the balance betweent between wet and dry you use the GTR1 MSTR bus for overall level.

This works well for me, as I might do many takes or edits creating many different tracks of the same instrument and I don't have to create FX for each new track (although track layers (Sonar 5) goes a long way towards not needing so many tracks).
I often clone a track, mute the original and work on a new version, these new tracks all point to the correct bus and pick up whatever FX they need.

But some effects go on the whole signal, eg distortion so I do

• track 1 guitar1, output to GTR1 GRP bus
  
• (tracks 2, 3 etc as various takes are recorded/edited)
  
• GTR1 bus, has compression distortion etc, output GTR1 MSTR bus, send to GTR1 FX bus
  
• GTR1 FX bus, has chorus reverb, digital delay etc, output GTR1 MSTR bus
  
• GTR1 MSTR bus, the master for guitar.
  

That means you are using 3 buses per track which can get a bit silly but works for me.

Something I learnt from a mixing competition here, is to reuse reverbs. Create a bus with a long reverb and short reverb and send to each as needed.

No right answer of course,
Brett

ORIGINAL: John T

Doesn't it make more sense, when using buses, to have the effect on the bus set to return only wet signal and no dry, and have the send on the original track be post fader?

That way, your send level controls your wet / dry balance, and your original track's fader controls overall volume.

That's the way I do it, although I am wondering if I'm missing a trick here.

That's a good point. I have the send set as pre-fader which is also pre FX bin and mute button.

Brett